But a claim so imposing must be substantiated by the most decisive and unimpeachable credentials; proofs, not only of an implied and indirect kind, but clear, emphatic, and to the point; proofs that it would be impossible to call in question.

The Church, however, declares, that she will not submit her claim to the arbitrament of human reason; she demands that it shall be at once conceded as an article of faith.

If this be admitted, all bar requirements must necessarily be assented to, no matter how exorbitant they may be.

With strange inconsistency the Dogmatic Constitution deprecates reason, affirming that it cannot determine the points under consideration, and yet submits to it arguments for adjudication.  In truth, it might be said that the whole composition is a passionate plea to Reason to stultify itself in favor of Roman Christianity.

With points of view so widely asunder, it is impossible that Religion and Science should accord in their representation of things.  Nor can any conclusion in common be reached, except by an appeal to Reason as a supreme and final judge.

There are many religions in the world, some of them of more venerable antiquity, some having far more numerous adherents, than the Roman.  How can a selection be made among them, except by such an appeal to Reason?  Religion and Science must both submit their claims and their dissensions to its arbitrament.

Against this the Vatican Council protests.  It exalts faith to a superiority over reason; it says that they constitute two separate orders of knowledge, having respectively for their objects mysteries and facts.  Faith deals with mysteries, reason with facts.  Asserting the dominating superiority of faith, it tries to satisfy the reluctant mind with miracles and prophecies.

On the other hand, Science turns away from the incomprehensible, and rests herself on the maxim of Wiclif:  “God forceth not a man to believe that which he cannot understand.”  In the absence of an exhibition of satisfactory credentials on the part of her opponent, she considers whether there be in the history of the papacy, and in the biography of the popes, any thing that can adequately sustain a divine commission, any thing that can justify pontifical infallibility, or extort that unhesitating obedience which is due to the vice-God.

One of the most striking and vet contradictory features of the Dogmatic Constitution is, the reluctant homage it pays to the intelligence of man.  It presents a definition of the philosophical basis of Catholicism, but it veils from view the repulsive features of the vulgar faith.  It sets forth the attributes of God, the Creator of all things, in words fitly designating its sublime conception, but it abstains from affirming that this most awful and eternal Being was born of an earthly mother, the wife of a Jewish carpenter, who has since become the queen of heaven.  The God it depicts is not the God of the middle ages,